Here comes a weekend’s worth of catchup, so get comfortable, get something to drink , and click the read more.
Okay, let’s see what’s been happening here. The site’s back up and going, and the report from my parents is that I’m a slacker and hadn’t made any significant February posts yet, so everything’s up to date.
Last week was hell, cancer-wise. Either this cisplatin/gemzar combo is a killer or the cumulative chemo effect is finally catching up to me. Went to work Wednesday and made it ’til 3:30 or so. Thursday I got all the way until about 4:00 and Friday I made it the whole day, but just barely. Friday morning I was all tired and even a little shaky by the time I got to the office. It eventually went away, but kind of tainted the whole rest of the day.
Friday evening was filled with stomach issues. I kept alternating between feeling hungry, feeling nauseous and feeling heartburny/indigested. That kept me up until 5 in the morning. Yes, it was a fun night.
Oh, and also my hair decided to start coming out in big messy clumps on Friday. Whee.
Saturday, the gang came over to help us get a lot of stuff out of our house. We’re still hoping to put the place in the market in early spring, so we rented a storage unit to stash some of our clutter so the open house will look nice. They did an awesome job for us and were a tremendous help. I, on the other hand, got dizzy just trying to supervise and wound up spending the rest of the weekend on the couch.
If there’s one thing I’m learning from this chemo, it’s that I’m not as lazy as I thought I was. I actually thought at one time that I had it in me to sit around while others did work for me, but it turns out this is just not the case. This is killing me. It turns out that feeling useless is an exceedingly bad thing for me, and that’s how I’ve felt the past week, growing more each day. Yeah, I know – I’ve got cancer, I’m supposed to be weak, I should let other people help and shoulder the burden and such, but I’m finding that’s just not me. I’d probably be driven really crazy by it, but I just don’t have the energy to freak out anymore.
Sunday morning I awoke with one clear thought. Or image. Yeah, an image. My stomach consisted of three separate chambers. Not like a cow’s stomach, but like a set of bay windows. I’m guessing one chamber each for hungry, ill and upset, which of course means there’s no chamber for “normal healthy and good.” Great. I laid there in bed for a bit thinking about this and various other medical mysteries until my conscious brain kicked back in and threw those fanciful notions out of the… window…
Once the visualizations were over, it was time to get out of bed and survey the warm tropical vista from our bedroom window. I believe at that point in the morning, we already had about a foot of snow, maybe a foot and a half. Unbelievable. Barb spent the day doing many of those “we’ll get to that later” home repair bits we’ve been saving, while I spent the day zonked on the couch again.
When the snow finally stoped/slowed around 2 or 3, Barb went outside to make an attempt at some shovelling as well as take some photos that appeared hopeless to the point of ridiculousness. We’re talking waist-high snowdrifts against the garage doors, people. The garage doors which store our showshovels, incidentally. Barb made a herculean attempt at doing some clearing, but the snow was too powdery and the driveway too humongous. We had to call in the big hitters – Her brother and nephew, Larry Squared came up to Hartford with their snowblower and saved us. After over an hour and a whole hell of a lot of snow, they got us to where Barb could go to work today and I’ll be able to get to chemo. Barb’s friends amaze me, then her family just kicks it up another notch. You people are all incredible.
So now that brings us to today. I’m still feeling weak as hell, so I’m working from home this morning, then I’ve got a chemo appointment at 1:45. Oh joy. My nurse had better have a full pen and a lot of paper, ’cause she’s going to have some writing to do today.